[geeks] iPad - NOT a 'Miss' for me I'm afraid

[Michael Parson]

On Feb 1, 2010, at Feb 1, 2010 6:25 AM, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 08:57:08PM -0600, Michael Parson wrote:
>> Won't play at all? or you just won't be seeing all the pixels?   
>> I've never rented HD video from ITMS, the one and only time I  
>> rented anything from there was a SD video, and my iPod Classic  
>> played it fine.  All of the other video on it is either ripped DVDs  
>> or stuff I pulled off my TiVo and converted to mp4 myself.  Apple  
>> does sell component video cables for the Classic and iPod Touch/ 
>> iPhone, which makes me think that they are probably capable of  
>> decoding at least something approaching HD, though I would accept  
>> that they probably don't do 1080p, which is not, as I understand  
>> it, part of the HD 'standard' as defined by whomever defines that  
>> sort of thing.
>>
> My experience has been if the CPU or video chips are too slow, then  
> it drops frames. It depdends upon the program and how slow it is.

That's not been my experience, but again, most of what I view on the  
iPod is stuff I set the encoding rates on.

>> TV and video
>> 	.  Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA  
>> Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i  
>> with Apple Composite Cable
>> 	.  H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile  
>> level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio  
>> in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps,  
>> 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC  
>> audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov  
>> file formats
>
> Well that says a lot. It says (to me) that there is some sort of  
> graphics
> acceleration with hardware mpeg-4 (aka MPEG-4/Divx/H2.64) decoding.
> The fact that it only decodes m4v, mp4 and mov files means very  
> little to
> me, it's just a choice of software unwrappers.
>
> It also explains why there is no flash decoder, flash is also just a  
> container,
> but it can be used to contain so many video formats that the iPad  
> could not process at anything useable that it was simpler to go  
> without it.
>
> Anyone else remember the days when Apple licensed the Soreson (sp?)  
> codec
> and there are bunch of quicktime videos that ONLY played on Apple  
> products?

For the longest time, the only way to play Quicktime video of any kind  
was with their Quicktime player.

> I doubt they want to be on the short end of that stick.
>
>> 720p is technically 'HD'
>
> Ok, It's DVD resolution, but I think DVD's were 720i.

NTSC DVD is 720x480i.  AFAIK, the only 1080p video readily available  
these days is on BluRay.

>> Sure, it's the 'standard', but personally, if I was leaving a copy  
>> behind, I would either leave a printed copy, or a PDF, something a  
>> little less editable.  Using their equipment, I would either plug  
>> into their projector, or be prepared, bringing the file in a format  
>> that I know they can deal with, either save out of Keynote in  
>> PowerPoint format, or PDF, which should be viewable on anything the  
>> customer would have.
>
> I agree with that, one having had a team leave a bunch of powerpoint  
> and
> word docs with a "strategic partner" in Korea and have them show up on
> a competitor's website. It was flattering, but (a lot more than)  
> annoying.

Yeah, I think I'd be more than a little upset if I saw something like  
that happen.

>> And that is closer to what I would probably get for my needs.
>
> There is a lot of competiton out there, and a lot of different devices
> to fit everyone's needs.

Which makes things much nicer. :)

>> There are plenty of reasons to not like this device, I would rather  
>> just discuss the points we know about rather than bits we won't  
>> know until it actually hits the street and gets dissected.  There  
>> are bits we do know, at least as much as we can trust the marketing  
>> literature that Steve has made available to us.
>
> But that ruins all the fun. It makes for long running discussions like
> what we used to have on here before Mr Bill (and others, mea culpa)  
> moved
> to Facebook.

yeah, I've dropped off there (again).

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org